XEBEC

I would have never thought I’d be able to use Eldritch Moe Blobs as a post title. But now I am, after despicable me has cast mine eyes on such an abomination. What happens when you view such a thing? This:

XEBEC, you’re not allowed to break this rule. You are NOT supposed to have all three heroines late for school, running and eating toast. Do you have three male characters that compliment each one? No. What do you expect us to see? All three of them bump into each other and make out later in yurilicious fashion?

… oh yeah.

We’re eleven episodes into Rinne no Lagrange. It still hasn’t let up with the pace it started with, and more surprising, it’s been trying to ramp it up. Episode seven felt like a filler episode, but with a dash of Muginami character development. I like this technique a lot since it allows those short bursts backstory and exposition to settle in without having overstayed their welcome. Often I see this kind of filler/development episode just fall flat, but with the setting Rinne no Lagrange has, it just feels natural. Why would this technique seem okay when Rinne no Lagrange does it and maybe not another? If you pick a similar episode in a separate series that also involves young characters that need to overcome friendship hurdles, and an unexplained backstory (to the other characters), it is often a sequence of evenly spread out character driven flashbacks and events which I think results in the dilution of the intended effect. If the rest of the series properly sets it up, then maybe it’s not much of an issue. That much is obvious.

But the big robot genre tends to collide with this very issue — often enough that I can’t stomach watching a new one, despite having enjoyed the robot anime genre for a while now. A series that needs an entire episode of flashbacks (heaven forbid more than one) is usually a multi-cour series. When was the last time you enjoyed a full episode of exposition and flashback that was intended to push the “This is why you should care” button? I certainly don’t remember any at all because I probably dropped those series due to such pacing issues, which does not help this post reinforce the issue I’m trying to argue about. A cheap shot would be mentioning any long running shonen anime. I remember Bleach being a repeat offender of this. I think I’ve already addressed the problem however. An anime done right should not have to push that “This is why you should care” button, because the second you’re able to recognize such character and plot function, it’s failed it’s job. Caring about a character should come naturally with the flow of the story, otherwise it’ll just feel bad. Should one not care about the character, it should at least shed light on the current situation. It’s what exposition is supposed to be. The thing I’m trying to say is that backstory, is just that. It’s backstory. It’s not the main story, so don’t shove it into the spot light.

I believe that a slice of backstory should not be an entire episode. Even as an entire episode, I don’t think it should be even in multi-cour(2+ cours worth) series. A counter point might be that there surely are entire episodes made as dedicated flashback/backstory episodes that, if removed, would have greatly impacted the strength and flow of a series. I say to that, if it fit well enough that removing it would have changed the pacing significantly and any intended effects, then it’s no longer backstory.

Ask yourself after watching episode seven of Rinne no Lagrange, what was the point of Lan mishandling eels? Nothing. (Fanservice.)

I loved that eel scene with Lan. Oh god.

It’s probably evident that I’ve written this when episode seven came out. I have stuff bottled up since then, and I’ll address it once the series closes. Unless I’m severely underestimating the amount of episodes.